Every day we are hearing about horrifying attacks being carried out against civilians in Ukraine; every day we see thousands of refugees arriving in Berlin. Despite a surfeit of volunteers and the best efforts of aid organisations, the work remains challenging and heartbreaking. At 7.30 pm on 3 April, we invite you to attend a special event on the current situation in Ukraine, highlighting how each of us can support those in need.
THE EARTH IS BLUE AS AN ORANGE
Iryna Tsilyk | Ukraine, Lithuania | 2020 | 74 min | OmeU
3 April, 7.30 pm, Hackesche Höfe Kino and online until 5 April 2022.
Followed by a panel discussion on the current situation in Ukraine with it Daniela Schwarzer (Open Society Foundations), Julian Pahlke (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Jan Sebastian Friedrich-Rust (Aktion gegen den Hunger); Host: Kira Fischer (Aktion gegen den Hunger).
Single mother Anna and her four children live on the front line in Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is nothing but bombings and chaos, the family manages to keep their home a safe haven, full of life and light. Each family member has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own lives during wartime. For Anna and the children, transforming trauma into a work of art is the ultimate act of staying human.
PANEL DISCUSSION
on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and the situation of refugees in Europe with regard to Germany's role.
We would like to take the outstanding film "The Earth is Blue as an Orange" as an inspiration to talk about the current situation in Ukraine and to contextualise how humanitarian aid should look on the spot and globally. We want to highlight the serious consequences of the war in Ukraine and for global hunger in an already tense food situation, for example in the Horn of Africa, Yemen or Lebanon. Furthermore, we would like to discuss the way we handle the people who have fled from their homes in Europe.
Prof. Dr. Daniela Schwarzer is executive director for Europe and Eurasia of the Open Society Foundations. Schwarzer is a renowned expert in European affairs and transatlantic and international relations. She is an honorary professor of political science at Freie Universität Berlin and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.
Prior to joining Open Society, Schwarzer was director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations. Before this, she served on the executive team of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Prior to working at the fund, Schwarzer worked at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
She was a special advisor to European leaders such as EU High Representative Josep Borrell and to countries including Poland and France during the preparation of their EU Council presidencies. Schwarzer has also worked as an opinion page editor and France correspondent for the Financial Times Deutschland.
Since October 2021 Julian Pahlke is a member of the German Bundestag. In the parliamentary group of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, he is responsible for European and international refugee policy. He is member of the Committee on Interior and Home Affairs, the Committee on European Affairs and a deputy member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid. He is also part of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. There he is a member of the Migration Committee.
Since fall 2016, he has been active in civilian sea rescue in the Mediterranean. In 2017, he was elected for two years to the honorary board of Jugend Rettet e. V. In this capacity he was responsible for advocacy, mainly at the United Nations in Geneva, the European Parliament and the European Commission in Brussels, and the German Bundestag in Berlin. Subsequently, he worked for SOS Mediterranee Deutschland e. V. and Sea-Eye e. V. From August 2020 to February 2021, he worked as policy advisor in the parliamentary office of Claudia Roth, then Vice President of the Bundestag.
Jan Sebastian Friedrich-Rust is the CEO of Action against Hunger in Germany and founded the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin in 2018. Prior he worked with Save the Children in Germany. He completed a Master of Science at the Institute for International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Jan is convinced that the power of visual storytelling will help us achieve a world free from poverty and hunger.
Kira Fischer is the Advocacy Coordinator at the German section of the international aid organisation Action Against Hunger. Previously, she worked at the German Federal Foreign Office in the division for Implementation of German Humanitarian Assistance in the field of humanitarian financing and policy issues. Before that, she worked for the GIZ in a food and nutrition security project in Myanmar and at Global Citizen Germany, among others. Kira Fischer holds a Master's degree in international relations with a focus on refugee studies. As a volunteer, she has been actively involved in civil search and rescue in the Mediterranean and a just migration policy and protection of refugees at Europe's external borders since 2015. First with Jugend Rettet in the field of advocacy and most recently she was on the board of SOS Méditerranée Germany (since 2022 SOS Humanity) until the end of 2021.
